Dungeons & Dragons' 50th Anniversary Adventure Is for the Hardiest of Heroes
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The vast majority of official adventures released for Dungeons & Dragons’ 5th edition have been about finding ways to introduce the legions of newcomers to the fabled TTRPG to its various worlds—stories that onboard brand new adventurers on their paths through D&D’s early progression. Some have thrown in ways to advance those journeys to even higher levels. But its latest involves a threat so dire that only the most seasoned of heroes are meant to venture forth.
That threat is, of course, the return of the sinister Vecna—the ancient, albeit obscure, lich of early D&D editions first only mentioned in artefact and item descriptions, that has now inadvertently become a global sensation thanks to the approximation that has become the major villain of Stranger Things. Now, in Vecna: Eve of Ruin, Vecna’s return doesn’t just threaten the Forgotten Realms, but all of the multiverse, and adventurers will need to chase down clues and tools to stop him across some of the most famous planes in D&D to put an end to him.
And be ready for it: Eve of Ruin is one of the rare official adventures that asks that players bring characters that are level 10 and above, with the expectation that by the time they are ready to face down Vecna once and for all in Eve of Ruin’s climax, they will have reached level 20, the end game power level for characters worthy of facing such a monumental threat.
“This is a high level adventure. It goes all the way up to 20th level; the final confrontation with Vecna is at 20th level,” senior D&D designer Amanda Hamon recently told press at a conference detailing Eve of Ruin. “It’s another detail that means this adventure is meant to be just off the rails—as high level, as we can get, and as epic as we can get, and hopefully as memorable as we can get.”
Most official D&D adventures leave players in either the higher single-digit levels, especially if they’re intentionally designed as onboarding campaigns, or, as Hamon explained, the “10 to 13 bubble”—an end point that reflects characters who have become seasoned heroes by the end of that particular story. That sort of level is meant to indicate powerful, perhaps even famous, characters in D&D. Although of course not a typical D&D adventure, last year’s smash hit gaming adaptation Baldur’s Gate 3, which climaxes in the party saving the titular city from an invasion of Mindflayers intent on restarting their interstellar empire, capped out leveling at 12—because the designers believed the eight levels of D&D progression beyond that was for the realm of almost godlike heroes rather than relatively new ones. So starting Eve of Vecna out in the back half of D&D’s leveling system means there’s going to be a lot of experienced players who already have characters they want to bring into an adventure like this, of course—something the D&D design team was keenly aware of coming into laying out Eve of Ruin’s arc.
“There was definitely a lot of discussion early on about giving DMs a lot of guidance about starting this adventure out, and characters being created at 10th level, or existing characters that are either between 10th or 13th level, because we recognize that a lot of our adventures end in that 10 to 13 bubble,” Hamon continued. “So there are people to be interested in playing those characters again [in Eve of Ruin] all the way up to 20th, as a sort of sequel to previous adventures. The book provides guidance for segueing existing characters into this, and how to adjust some of the early chapters to to make the leveling even out, so that they can go on that journey and have it mechanically work for them. There’s also story guidance about integrating characters or creating characters from all across the multiverse to get them involved in this story.”
There will, however, be ways for players to onboard less-seasoned characters into Eve of Ruin’s storyline: preorders of the adventure will come with a supplemental single-session adventure called Nest of the Eldritch Eye, available through D&D Beyond starting today, that will cover the opening seeds of Eve of Ruin’s primary story. “This adventure takes place earlier, than the book and takes place before the pivotal events. There are cults of Vecna who are participating in this plot for a very long time before the characters ever get involved—and this adventure shows the early stages of that larger plot,” Hamon explained. “[Nest of the Eldritch Eye] really introduces this larger plot, giving that same sense that the early chapters of [Eve of Ruin] do, and gives low level characters an opportunity to see the absolute wide and horrifying scope of what is going on. Because as scary as the events of this adventure are, it’s very clear that this is going on everywhere, and that there is going to be some sort of inevitable escalation, and that is back in Eve of Ruin.”
Eve of Ruin opens with adventurers exploring a series of Vecna cultists across the Forgotten Realms, who have begun stealing secrets—literally extracting them from important people’s minds, or stealing vital documents, and connecting them to various cults across the whole D&D multiverse in a ritual. And, through them, Vecna will funnel that secretive energy into a Ritual of Remaking, allowing him to re-shape the entire D&D multiverse in his own dark image. After catching wind of this—and finding out the true scope of the threat at hand thanks to the intervention of three of the most powerful mages around, Alustriel Silverhand, Mordenkainen, and even a version of the almighty Tasha—the players are tasked with the true adventure in Eve of Ruin: travel the multiverse, acquire pieces of the legendary Rod of Seven Parts, and use it to prevent Vecna’s plans.
That, of course, is where the anniversarial aspect of Eve of Ruin comes in—players are not just dealing with a famous foe, but travelling across the multiverse to revisit beloved planes and settings from D&D’s history, and returning to characters (and even enemies) they’ve perhaps already faced in their own adventuring career. Eve of Ruin will whisk parties from the Forgotten Realms and to six key locales: Planescape, the astral seas of Spelljammer, Eberron, Ravenloft (home to the almighty Strahd), Dragonlance, and Greyhawk. Each plane will give parties and dungeon masters chances to not just have smaller escapades as they search for the Rod of Seven Parts, evoking different eras of D&D, but also weave their own personal stories into these locales if their characters have been part of the prior adventures that have been set in those planes—whether or not it went well for them and the people they encountered, because in the end, Vecna’s plan means doom for everyone, lawful or chaotic or otherwise.
So players venture across the multiverse, find a way to stop Vecna, and then face off with him once and for all—but what’s next? After all, 2024 isn’t just Dungeons & Dragons’ 50th anniversary, it’s a major crossroads for the TTRPG at large, as it prepares to formally bid farewell to the current edition of the game and lay out its future, with a series of new primary rulebooks rolling out later this year and in early 2025. But D&D’s next chapter wants to offer as much compatibility with its present moment—no doubt in part to the huge surge in popularity 5th edition has brought between the game’s popularity spike during the covid-19 pandemic, the rise of actual play, and pop culture moments like Stranger Things or Baldur’s Gate—as possible, including having something like Eve of Ruin still playable with the new core rules. Which means that even as the day is (hopefully) saved, the adventure will leave ways open for players to return to it and its celebration of the game’s recent past as D&D looks ahead to the future.
“There’s a bit of bit of guidance at the very end about sort of what happens in the narrative and, you know, how to decompress a little bit from this final fight. There’s not gonna be as much as sort of like, multiverse affecting information as we have seen in previous adventures,” Hamon noted. “But there’s very much a sense that Vecna is done for now after the fight—and that he will come back. It will be a long time, but again, the threat will rise.”
“What I hope, and what we all hope, is very indicative of this adventure moving on into the future, and being a high level adventure that people can play for many years to come,” Hamon concluded. “With the remastered core books coming out it was a really good time to sort of show that ‘hey, we can make an adventure that has the scope, and have it be good for the previous version of the rules, but also for many years to come.’”
Vecna: Eve of Ruin will release Tuesday, May 21, and is available to pre-order starting today—which includes immediate digital access to the one-shot Nest of the Eldritch Eye, early access to Eve of Ruin on D&D Beyond from May 7, and more. Stay tuned to io9 later today for more insight into Vecna’s return!
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